You'll just need to deal with its oversensitive controls

Who knew commanding little plant-like creatures could be so entertaining?

I’ve dabbled with the Pikmin series before, but going into Pikmin 3, I didn’t know very much about the franchise.

When it comes to experiencing a video game, I always think this is an advantage. It makes the entire experience feel fresher and, quite often, more entertaining. After all, it’s difficult to be surprised by a video game when you already know almost everything about it before even playing it. After a few minutes of experimenting and a couple of quick tutorials, I quickly realized Nintendo has created something special with the third title in the Pikmin series.

In Pikmin 3 you play as an extra-terrestrial that’s crash landed on an alien planet. You discover a race of cheerful subservient aliens, Pikmin, and proceed to use them to collect items, fight enemies and help you find your way back to your home planet. The basic principle of the Pikmin series thankfully hasn’t changed with Pikmin 3. The goal is still to collect fruit and destroy enemies with your mob of little plant-like creatures. The ultimate goal of finding a way to return to your home planet, is the new plot point this time around.

Different coloured Pikmin specialize in specific abilities. For instance, yellow Pikmin can be thrown higher and are resistant to electricity, red Pikmin are vicious and are perfect for taking out enemies and rock Pikmin can smash through glass and crystal. You’ll also run into a few other Pikmin types over the course of Pikmin 3.

Various Pikmin types are also used to solve the game’s challenging puzzles and also to collect items, all with Pikmin 3’s persistent day system constantly looming in the back of your mind.

Managing how much time you have to complete certain tasks before the end of an in-game day, adds a level of urgency to Pikmin 3. I often ran out of time while fighting a boss or figuring out a puzzle, causing me to pack up and bring my Pikmin back to their spaceship. When you’re granted control of multiple main characters, switching between them in order to solve puzzles and manage your time more efficiently, becomes much more frantic and challenging.

Yellow Pikmin are always used to solve puzzles that involve electricity.

Also, making sure you have enough fruit sitting in your spaceship to eat in order to stay alive, is important and forces the player to make difficult decisions. Do you fight that boss or go hunting for fruit because you only have one bottle left? Some gamers may find the day and night cycle and fruit gathering feature frustrating though. It makes Pikmin 3 tense and can take the fun out of exploration.

If a Pikmin isn’t under your control at the end of the game’s day cycle, it’s destroyed. This makes knowing the location of your little creatures at all times extremely important. If I accidentally unleashed a mob of red Pikmin at an electrically charged enemy (I should be using Yellow Pikmin), I actually felt bad about it. It was almost as if I let my army of Pikmin down. Through its relatable, familiar, real world setting, Pikmin 3 forges a connection with the player, forcing you to actually care about the well being of your plant army. The game’s world actually reminds me of childhood summers spent at my parent’s cottage.

While Pikmin 3’s gameplay is addictive and great, its controls can be frustrating at times, especially if you opt to play it with the Wii U’s GamePad. Moving the game’s Pikmin selection cursor with the GamePad’s joystick is slightly over-sensitive. If you have to target a specific part of an enemy’s body (this is common in boss fights), it’s difficult to pin point exact locations, especially if the enemy is moving quickly.

Boss fights in Pikmin 3 are difficult, especially if you don’t have enough of the correct kind of Pikmin.

Most of the time, I actually played Pikmin 3 only on the GamePad while watching something on TV. I loved this feature and it would be great if more Wii U games allowed the player to game only on the Wii U’s touch screen. Pikmin 3 also offers alternative control methods that take advantage of Wii’s Wiimote. Instead of a joystick you point at your television and move the Pikmin selection cursor around. While this control method is more accurate and usually effective, I’ve never been a fan of motion controls, especially in a fast-paced real-time strategy title like Pikmin 3.

To save time, you can also set waypoints on the WIi U’s GamePad. This feature comes in handy when you’re managing multiple characters at once and is also a great way to make the most out of your in-game day. Most of the time, since Pikmin 3 usually doesn’t force you to separate your army, I walked around with one giant mob of Pikmin and characters.

I found dividing my team wasn’t always very effective. Often I wouldn’t have enough Pikmin in a certain squad or my idle Pikmin would get eaten by some sort of beast. Dividing your team does let you accomplish things more quickly though.

While I didn’t spend a lot of time with Pikmin 3’s multiplayer mode, Bingo Battle, I quickly realized that it’s a lot of fun.

Pikmin 3 also features a unique multiplayer mode that unfortunately, in true Nintendo fashion, doesn’t have any online features. I thought Nintendo was finally embracing the Internet with the Wii U. But, apparently, they’re still afraid of letting gamers play online. This is a shame because Pikmin 3 is exactly the kind of title Nintendo should be implementing online multiplayer into.

It also features a separate mission mode that forces you to take advantage of everything you’ve learned in the game’s main adventure. This mode is also playable cooperatively with a friend. Bingo Battle, a multiplayer mode that tasks players with collecting specific pieces of fruit, is a blast to play with friends and is really unique.

Despite its control shortcomings, Pikmin 3 is still a great game. Its characters are charming and it proves Nintendo can still create a unique gameplay experience on its struggling home console, I just wish the game was longer; it can be completed in somewhere between 8 and 15 hours.